"Our people were very very pleased by it."
Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
You gotta love all this transparency, am I right, or am I right?!
A big gap in the bills has been what to do with so-called "Cadillac" health plans. Most union plans fall into this category, and because they are tied closely with the Democratic Party, you can imagine they were upset when they found out they would be taxed (up to 40%) on their health benefits.
Well, have no fear. Unions are now exempt until 2018. They also upped the threshold for what is considered "Cadillac." They came out of their clandestine meetings today giving everyone high-fives and saying they will NOW put their stamp on Obamacare.
So, now two things:
(1) What about MY family? - We aren't represented by a collective bargaining agreement (aka union). Why am I on the hook beginning in 2013 and not them? In a country claiming to make health care "fair" am I the only one thinking this isn't fair?
(2) Who is paying for the shortfall? - With the unions exempted, there is now $60 billion of revenue the government needs to find elsewhere. Of course, no one offers any important hard-core facts as to where that money will come from. It appears to be a secondary issue compared with the "success" of one less group of people clearing the way for ObamaCare.
Wow! I'm loving your blog! Keep up the good work - I'll keep reading~
ReplyDeleteHere’s the input from your liberal friend. Keep in mind that I truly love and respect you and that these are my opinions. I understand your concern about increasing taxes and deficit, those are valid points and I agree with them but there are concerns that trump those for me. First off let me just say that I am not sure what you mean by “clandestine meetings” It seems perfectly appropriate that negotiations take place in private and then at their conclusion be announced publically. And your source “Fox News” can hardly be called unbiased. But let’s talk about why Barack Obama is so desperate to pass this bill that he would essentially “make a deal with the devil”. In 2008 46.3 million Americans did not have health insurance. Since we automatically insure individuals below the poverty line we can infer that these individuals are above the poverty line but for some reason (either their employer cannot afford to insure them or they cannot afford to insure themselves) they are without insurance. You are probably asking me right now “Why do I care about those people?” Well let me tell you why you should care. These individuals who don’t have health insurance wait to go see a doctor. This includes individuals with illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. Then when an emergent situation arises and they are rushed to the ER guess who ends up paying for it? Umm yeah US! Our hospital and insurance bills become more expensive to cover the shortfall which in 2008 was over 9 million in the Bay area alone. There is also the issue of lack of oversight in insurance companies that is costing Americans more every year all the while refusing to pay for certain illnesses or like in the case of our good friend Summer Cameron putting a lifetime limit on how much she can spend on hospital services. We need this bill for these and many other reasons. I am not saying that it is a perfect bill or that it won’t have it’s own problems. What I am saying is that none of the opponents of this bill have a better idea. They seem to want to leave things as they are with skyrocketing health care costs and the health of American’s quickly getting worse.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/014227.html
http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2009/10/03/news/doc4ac6f9dabcc89260673869.txt
To Sorenson - of course there needs to be a shift in health care. Coming from a wife of a family medicine physician - there MUST be change! But I would argue that giving "free health care" is not the answer. Call me biased being married to a primary care doctor, but I believe that that is the heart of the solution, we MUST have more primary care physicians, this would decrease the wait of getting to a doctor when a problem arises, AND it would decrease overhead costs because they would be channeling health problems in the right way, primary care doctor to specialist!
ReplyDeleteBUT the problem in the medical field is that family care, internal medicine and pediatricians go to medical school for 4 years just like all other doctors, there residency IS shorter, but comparing 3 to 5 years is not much in the grand scheme of things, but guess what! We have incurred the SAME amount of loans as some of my husbands fellow classmates who will go on to become Orthopods, Urologists, Radiologists, etc. The DIFFERENCE - it will take us WAY longer to pay back loans because our earning yield is much lower than theres because family physicians don't do procedures, where the money is.
I digress some - the main point, medical students incurring mass amounts of student loans don't want to go into general medicine because of fear of not having enough to pay back and live and retire at a decent age. So what do I wish - I wish there were more incentives for med students to go into primary care. I strongly feel that with more primary care physicians our health care system could be much more functional and less expensive.
I totally agree that PCPs should be payed more. However the problem is larger than that, and there is no such thing as FREE health care.
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